1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to media annotation and more specifically to user-generated audio annotations of media.
2. Introduction
Cameras, video and still photograph, are integrated into more and more consumer electronics gaining ubiquity in a matter of less than a decade. Video footage and still pictures are generated at an increasing rate. Video sharing sites like YouTube.com have exploded in popularity allowing users to post their own video creations for others to view and comment on. Consequently, a flood of footage is captured each day by millions of individuals across the country and the world. This information is largely unsearchable because insufficient metadata has been added to them to enable traditional search methods.
YouTube.com allows users to select categories and add tags to uploaded videos, but that can be a tedious process for many users. Such tags are only very rough separations into like groups. Often, less computer savvy users will forego adding more descriptive tags to their videos for many reasons, leaving the tags and categories with a less than optimal implementation because the descriptive tags are less than complete.
With cameras everywhere, newsworthy events, concerts, and similar events are recorded by multiple cameras by multiple individuals. A potential wealth of information and angles is available, but not usable because video clips are not uniformly tagged with metadata, if they are tagged at all. News agencies such as Fox News or CNN can search through clips of newsworthy events, but with great difficulty and expense. Forensic agencies can search through video clips for evidence in solving crimes, but with great difficulty and expense.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is an easier, more convenient way for users to add metadata to videos and photos taken by digital cameras.